December 2017 brings with it a landmark moment in AVAware’s history. Twenty one years ago, on the 12th of December 1996, AVAware was born... well, incorporated anyway. AVAware was originally founded by the current President, Paul Kirsch and a gentleman by the name of Steve Rendulic. Rendulic was a veteran of the architectural openings industry, having spent many years working with a competing software developer. Motivated by a desire to develop more technologically "current" software for the industry, he enlisted the aid of his co-founder, a software engineer with extensive experience in developing line-of-business applications for several industry segments. Together they began AVAware with a vision to sincerely establish new standards of quality for both software development and customer support.

AVAware made their debut in the architectural openings industry with the introduction of a revolutionary new product... AVAcad. AVAcad is the first and only CAD application specifically designed for architectural openings. In addition to providing detailers the means to create CAD-quality elevations in seconds, AVAcad launched a new era of technology in the industry with its ability to "disassemble" elevations and generate fully priced material lists – all automatically.

Not long after the release of AVAcad, AVAware released 'AVAproject' – an innovative piece of software that would forever change the way take-offs and estimates would be done for years to come!

AVAproject and AVAproject Fusion 16.1 in General Release

The most eagerly anticipated update to the AVAproject Suite of products is now in general release and available for download.

In 2016, the AVAware team made a departure from the usual cycle of product development and release with version 16.1. In a typical year, AVAware would post an early spring release, followed by at least one other major product update in the fall. This year, the team merged the development schedules for the year and worked through the spring and summer on the largest and most feature-rich product update ever released.

The extended development cycle offered the developers the time they needed to bring a number of exciting new features to the product. Many of these enhancements, especially those involving our AVAproject Fusion integration platform, involved many hours of work in cooperation with some of our most experienced users to make our vision for the product a reality. AVAware attributes much of the stability that our users have come to expect and rely upon, on the extensive “beta” testing we conduct on each and every product release. With the size and complexity of version 16.1, the “beta” process was more important than ever. As such, AVAware conducted our longest and most widely participated “beta” program ever. We would like to offer our deepest and most sincere thanks to all the “beta” users that assisted us this year – as always your suggestions and feedback are the wellspring of inspiration that allow us to create the most sophisticated products ever developed for the architectural openings industry.

The list of new features in this release of AVAproject is far too extensive to describe in a single article. As always, the complete list can be found in the product’s integrated ‘Help’, and on the ‘Product Updates’ page of the AVAware website. Subscribers to our AVAwire newsletter can expect to see several articles of the next few issues that focus on specific features and enhancements in detail.

Amongst the most exciting and powerful technical achievements in 16.1, are the latest developments to the AVAproject Fusion Integration Platform. This incredible product has already been called “revolutionary” by many users, for its ability to provide integration capabilities to virtually any accounting/ERP system. Fusion has eliminated the age-old “lockdown” that competing products have placed on users, by allowing distributors to choose the accounting system that best suits them – not the one that best suits the vendor. AVAware developers have taken this integration capability to the next level; AVAproject users can now make “real-time” inquiries of Fusion and the connecting accounting system right from the Openings Schedule and/or Hardware Groups. Essentially, AVAproject Fusion has facilitated a “live” link to any supported accounting/ERP system – right from the detailing and estimating area.

As usual, a complete list of “Release Notes” is available in the software’s built-in “Help” system and can be previewed prior to download in the “Product Updates” section of the Customer Login Area.

AVAproject Fusion - the revolutionary data access and reporting tool and latest major software release from AVAware Technologies is now shipping!

Available for download now is a newly expanded and more comprehensive Help File. Accessed through the Help menu in AVAproject, our new Help File provides access to past and present editions of the Getting Started Guide and is fully searchable, providing an expansive knowledgebase. Our Help File provides you with:

The Getting Started Guide

AVAproject and AVAcad release notes

Supplemental articles for further reading

Getting Started Guide Now Available

A new "Getting Started" guide has been released to compliment the new edition of AVAproject and AVAcad. The new guide features supplemental content for AVAproject, and can be downloaded via the Downloads section of the Customer Login area.

Catalog Installer

The AVAware Repository, is a structure and storage location for AVAproject system files. To accomodate all of our users, regardless of which version of AVAproject is being used, every catalog now comes packaged with the new Catalog Installation tool. The Catalog Installer determines which version of AVAproject is running and installs catalogs to the appropriate directory.

No more browsing for application paths or moving catalog files manually! Simply "double click" the downloaded catalog to launch the Catalog Installer and click "Install". The Catalog Installer will install the catalog file exactly where it needs to be.

64-bit operating systems have become the new standard, due to 32-bit operating systems reaching their limit with respect to the computer hardware they can support. The AVAware development team have optimized AVAware products to run seamlessly on both 32 and 64-bit operating systems, taking advantage of whatever computer hardware is available.